7:30 PM.  It’s my favorite time of the day.  It’s the time that the sun dips below the horizon and the earth begins to cool.  The scorching heat of the day is over.  If we’re fortunate, we have electricity and I can set out a fan, pull out a book, and read by the light over our table on the concrete patio.  There are four broken chairs to choose from.  Two are without backs.  The other two have damaged legs.  Pick your poison.

The place is Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  The poorest city in the Western Hemisphere.  According to CIA’s World Factbook, 60% of the Haitian population is below the poverty line.  Two thirds of all adult Haitians do not have formal jobs with an unemployment rate of 40%.  Yearly inflation is 14.7%.  To put that in perspective, the United States has an unemployment rate of 4%, and 1.9% yearly inflation.  Port-au-Prince is 700 miles southeast of Miami.  Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic and just to the west of Haiti are the islands of Cuba and Jamaica. 

The last decade I have been a pilot in the US Navy.  Back in 2014, I was invited through my church to participate in a mission trip to Haiti.  I saw abject poverty that isn’t present anywhere in developed countries, a lack of basic services, little formal industry and jobs, but beautiful landscapes with ocean and mountains.  I felt a pull to return on a more long-term basis to learn the language, understand the culture, and make a small difference if I could.  This year I left my active duty military job to do just that.  I took a position as the Director of Operations of a small recycling and eco-fuel non-profit, El Fuego del Sol (FdS).

Being my first blog post, I will go over how we get our basic needs met.  Like anywhere in the world, amenities are different depending on where you stay in Haiti.  FdS is located a couple miles northeast of the Port-au-Prince airport in a district of the town called Tabarre.  Currently living onsite are 4 Haitians, myself, and a summer intern from the US, Max.  There are about 15 employees and we have daily pickups of recycling and trash from a small number of western businesses throughout the city.

Electricity

FdS pays for city/grid power.  This is usually on for less than 5 hours a day.  When this is on we are able to run our refrigerator/freezer and our water pump.  The grid also charges our batteries.  Most of the day we can use inverter battery power.  While only small equipment such as lights and cell phone/laptop charging can occur, this power generally lasts all but about 6 or so hours of the day.  If power is needed for the remainder of the day, we have a gas powered generator.  We can walk (20 mins) or drive to the closest station to pickup some gas.

Water

We get our water from a house down the street.  We have three, five-gallon Culligan bottles.  We wheelbarrow or carry them down the quarter mile dirt and gravel street where they are refilled and capped.  Refilling all three costs about $1.  The three bottles usually last us about 2-3 days.  We store the water in a large pot in the lone freezer on the compound.  It sits on our patio and gets power for a few hours a day when the grid it on.  The rest of the day it stays cold enough to keep the water cool.  We use this for our drinking water and to brush our teeth.

Our bathing, washing, toilet water is pumped up from a well a few hundred feet below the site.  It is pumped into an open reservoir of about 2,000 gallons.  Myself and Max have a shower/toilet in the room next to ours, so we bucket this water for showering and to pour down the toilet after use.  Our instrument of use is most likely a trash picked, broken hot kettle that we dip in the bucket and pour down the toilet or pour over ourselves to get wet or rinse off.

We walk around the town most evenings if only to get a little food to eat and visit the grocery store (similar to a CVS).  Many times, one of the Haitians that speaks the best English, Son, joins us.  He always gets a shower before going out.  Last night I ask him why he showers before going out when it is so dusty and hot and he’ll be dirty when we return.  He just smiles and says, “It’s for the girls.  We may meet women.”  I just laugh.  I usually only shower before bed.  I get dirty and smellier throughout the day.  It’s just a fact of life here.  It feels good to be clean rolling into bed.

A/C

There is none here.  Actually, some restaurants and grocery stores have it.  When it hits your skin it’s a delight.

Sleeping

I have a twin mattress under a mosquito net.  I’m weaning myself off bug spray.  My mattress is probably older than I am and I can feel every spring in it.  The Haitians that live onsite all have mattresses, but I’m sure they are dealing with worse.  This week when at the hardware store I found some 2 inch foam bigger than our mattresses.  When I got back and showed Max, he elated, “Let’s GO!”  Excitedly, he measured our beds and cut them to size.  Much more comfortable!

Food

The cook, Guerlande, cooks two meals a day – a light breakfast and a lunch.  Breakfast is two breadsticks with peanut butter and jelly, one boiled egg, and a cup of coffee.  Lunch is rice, beans, and a chicken drumstick.  It is a bit monotonous, but we have food, unlike many here.  Without adequate electricity, food storage is near impossible.  Dinner consists of either walking to a nearby restaurant, street vendor, or cliff bar.

Transportation

FdS owns two very rickety vehicles – a large box truck and a very beat up SUV.  The clutch on the truck is going bad and the power steering is out on the SUV.  Both are manual.  The past few days I finally braved driving the streets of PaP with our SUV.  There are minimal rules of the road, only a handful of stop lights or signs in the whole city, unpaved or very damaged roads, and traffic abounding.  It is crazy here!  I have procured probably a dozen tap-tap and moto rides as well.  A tap-tap is a group taxi. It is a covered pickup truck that operate back and forth down major roads that are heavily decorated.  Prices are in the 15-20 cent range per ride.  There is a bench down both sides of the bed where the drivers cram about 6 people per side, but I have seen as many as 8.  Get ready to be intimate with the person beside you!  Motos (large scooter/small motorcycle) are much scarier in my opinion, though they generally get places faster since they don’t sit in traffic jams.  Every moto ride I take, I pray to God and any saint I can think of that we don’t crash.  I must bring a helmet with me on my next time back to the states!

Running FdS is paramount to running a startup in a place where you don’t speak the language and are learning new rules of business every day.  It’s hard and challenging, but the kind that’s good and fulfilling.  The team here is happy and wants to work even if the conditions are less than ideal.  In week two, I bought five plastic lawn chairs.  The staff was ecstatic.  The first new chairs at FdS, maybe ever. Previous chairs had been trash picked.  Once in the past two weeks we ran of cash for a day and we missed two meals, so we had some US supplied cliff bars.  Our finances teeter on the edge as we wait for payment for trash collection or donations to come in.  One of the main things I have focused the team’s efforts on is organizing the site.  Trash is everywhere along with random equipment, parts, chickens, and cats.  It’s definitely not the US, but it’s been a blast so far!  My Creole vocabulary is up to about 150 words and increasing quickly.  Everything about being here is new and such an adventure and I wouldn’t trade what I’m experiencing for a/c or a steak dinner.  Maybe a cool, pressurized shower.

A final note.  If you have the opportunity, have a grenadia smoothie.  You won’t be disappointed.